


Where the Road Meets the Sky

by sometimeswelose



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Destiel - Freeform, Fix-It, Fluff, Healing, Heaven, Love, M/M, Past Child Abuse, Past Sexual Abuse, canon adjacent
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-14
Updated: 2020-11-30
Packaged: 2021-03-09 22:55:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 17,501
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27554206
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sometimeswelose/pseuds/sometimeswelose
Summary: The end of the road so far. This starts after 15x18. Canon compliant up until the conversation with Bobby in 15x20.This is the Heaven that they deserve.If Jack is the new God, who is the new Death? What does Dean do besides drive while he waits for Sam?(Don't worry, I'm fixing it)*** *** ***"The verse I read over and over again, the one last hope I had that maybe my disobedience wasn't entirely against God's plan, was First Corinthians 13."Dean is pretty familiar with both the Old and New Testament by this point. After everything, it would have been ludicrous not to have read the damn thing cover to cover for research. So he knows what Cas is saying and it makes every part of his body warm in a way that he doesn't know what to do with.Love is patient. Love is kind.
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester
Comments: 40
Kudos: 205





	1. And yesterday I saw you kissing tiny flowers

**Author's Note:**

> ** Content Warning: Brief mentions of physical abuse, sexual abuse of minor**

" _I'll meet you/Where the road meets the sky…"_

"Really? What is this crap?" Dean shakes his head at the stereo where the pop music is being rendered by the Impala's particular tinny quality. For grungier bands, this is probably how the songs are intended to be played - screw vinyl. It's the sound of the road, the smell of leather and gasoline, that makes Zeppelin sink into the bones. 

But the effect doesn't work on that Top Forty shit, and maybe that's why Dean has never been able to stand it. His only exposure to music was through static. 

"I grabbed it the last time we hit up a thrift shop. I just needed something new. Leave it, it won't kill you." Sam feels entirely neutral about the music, but it's his brotherly duty to extend anything that annoys Dean this much. Besides, even though the lyrics are sad, the tune is upbeat. 

Dean huffs out a breath and drums his fingers against the windowsill, but he leaves the stereo on as he turns back to keeping watch. Probably because the alternative is to return to painful silences they've been falling into. 

"Look, Dean. Don't you think we should -" 

Without looking, Dean reaches over and turns up the volume on the pop music he despises. 

"Dean, come on, man." 

Dean pretends not to hear him. Or maybe he can't. The tinny voice now is a groundswell of emotion. 

" _I'll meet you/Where the road meets the sky/Some day soon/So don’t say goodbye…"_

Sam looks at his brother's profile, now nodding his head unconsciously to the music as he gazes out the driver's side window. They're both watching, waiting. 

This is how it always is. 

Sam sighs and lets the matter go, for the moment. What else can he do? He can't force Dean to talk, not without risking an explosion, and they can't afford that right now. But of course, Dean will just explode some other way if Sam can't get him to talk. He knows his brother. They each have their own way of dealing with the worst, their own warped survival mechanisms.

Sam stares out the opposite window and thinks about Ruby. He doesn't let himself think about the few women he's actually loved, or the couple of dogs he's kept. He doesn't think about his brief time in college, the only few years of his life when he really got to pretend to be normal, when he was learning just how different his family was from his friends' families. 

It wasn't just the demons. Most people didn't have a father who abandoned them with strangers or alone in seedy motel rooms. Most of them hadn't been raised by their older brothers. A brother who, even when Sam left, was already becoming a functional alcoholic. 

That's the thing. 

Sam doesn't let himself dwell on the people he's loved. He looks at all those pieces, packs them up, and says goodbye. But he never loved Ruby. He only wanted her. He wanted what she could give him. He thinks about the salt-iron taste of her blood and it still makes his mouth water. 

Sam is an addict. In recovery, sure, but it's ongoing, present-tense. They're all addicted to something. For him, it's the rush of power he used to feel hopped up on demon blood, the way it felt to finally have some sense of control, some weapon that was within him. It is a terrible thing to lust for, to still hold inside of him, and he knows that. But it is the darkness that is him. Deep down, it is the famine within. 

And Dean? Sam looks at his brother's averted face and wishes he knew what to say, what to do for him. Dean is a functional alcoholic, and it's not good, it's not healthy, but Sam can live with that. What he's not sure Dean can live with is the guilt he's always holding onto just beneath the surface. It's been tearing him apart for years, maybe for as long as they've been on the road. All the deaths, all the losses, all the people they couldn't save. Dean has their father's voice in his head, even after all this time, John Winchester telling him to look out for his little brother, to look out for the world. 

Sam can put away the people he's lost. The grief never fully leaves, but he can compartmentalize. He can put it all somewhere in that darkness where it's quiet and cool, somewhere it won't explode. 

Dean's addicted to the pain, to the guilt. He can't let it go, can't stop touching the wound. He can't admit that's what he's doing either, not until it all overflows at once. His cracks are always just at the surface, held in constant tension, one more loss away from self-destruction. 

Sam can't blame him. Most of the time, he can't help him either. He'll just be there, to try and pick up the pieces. 

Dean ignores Sam's frequent glances. He can feel his brother's eyes on him and he wants to snap at him but the stupid pop music is too loud, and anyway, it wouldn't do any good. It could only lead to talking, and that's out of the question. Sam is too fixated on talking. He might be right, but Dean doesn't have to accept that. 

There are some things Dean can't tell his kid brother. There are things he just doesn't have words for, that he's never had words for. 

Dean watches the trees out the window, the impenetrable darkness between them, checking the mirror from time to time. They're waiting for Jack. Dean's not expecting him yet, but they can't afford to let their guard slip for even a moment, not now. 

It's harder to be still. Dean would have given anything to be fighting something right then. To not have the words echoing over and over again in his skull. 

Everyone who has ever loved him dies. 

Everyone he ever cared about. 

Cas is just more proof of that. More proof that somehow, something about Dean Winchester is fundamentally poisonous, destructive, fatal. 

Dean can't think about it. He won't think about it. 

Sam's shitty pop music switches to the next song. It's worse, but better because Dean can't make out the lyrics. Something about love, as it always is. 

He can't think about it. 

This is how it always is. The brothers in this car, the smell of gunpowder, leather, and whiskey wrapped around them like a home, waiting through the darkness for whatever comes next. The world always promises to end and then it _doesn't_ , and they have to find a way to go on with themselves. Dean has to find some way to go on living with himself when he's the one who has been wrecked in all of this. Tragedy happens to the survivors. 

_I cared about the whole world because of you._

Dean raps his fist against the windowsill. He's not going to lose it. He can't afford to think about this, to talk about this. He tries to tap into that numbness that usually sustains him, the place where feelings never fully die, but never get to fully live either. But when he reaches for that reservoir of emptiness, all he can find is the other memories he's buried there. And there's a lot Dean Winchester has tried to numb himself to. 

***

There was one man. Just one, just once. It was the year Sam left for college, Dean must have been 21, 22. He'd been working a case outside Lincoln, Nebraska and met up with another hunter tracking the same signs. Dean had heard of Mason Graves, from Bobby, maybe, so when they'd run into each other and Graves had offered to work the case together, Dean had been eager to agree. There was just no denying that Graves was… cool. A couple years older than Dean, he'd seemed like everything a hunter should be - calm, collected, a good shot, in a leather jacket and sunglasses with his black hair tousled and his grin wide and easy. He had a neck tattoo of an ace, so Dean had called him that for the three days they worked together. They'd tracked down and killed a chupacabra. 

They celebrated with whiskey, passing a bottle back and forth in the parked Impala. There had been a lot of laughter. Dean remembered being tipsy and warm. 

Things happened. Just hand things, in the front seats. Just mouths against each other, all hot and soaked up with Jack Daniels. Just Graves' other hand on the nape of Dean's neck and Dean's other hand up the back of his shirt, and…

Dean had been young, tipsy, flushed with the success. He'd been so lonely, was so desperate for some sort of belonging. What Graves had been offering was validation. He'd smelled like a hunter, like the road. When he'd kissed him it was like he was accepting Dean, judging him worthy enough of this attention, this touch. 

Dean has just wanted to be worth something, to someone. 

Eventually, Graves had written down his number on a scrap of paper and pressed it into Dean's jacket pocket. 

"You give me a call next time you're near Texas, hear?" He'd said with his drawl, flashing a grin. 

"You got it, Ace." Dean had fingered the scrap of paper in his pocket, trying to appear offhand. Graves had ruffled his hair before leaving the impala and getting into his own truck. Dean had listened to the sound of it fade away along the gravel road out in the middle of nowhere Nebraska, leaning back in his seat with his eyes closed. 

When Dean finally got out of the car and went into the seedy motel room he'd booked at the beginning of the hunt, John Winchester was sitting on the edge of the bed. 

"Dad?" Dean's heart skyrocketed even as his stomach plummeted. This wasn't an uncommon feeling for a reunion with his father. There was always the good and the bad with John. 

"Dean." John stood up. He wasn't looking at Dean. There was a thin scratch across his right cheek that hadn't been there when they'd last parted a week ago. 

"I thought we were meeting in Illinois. Is… everything okay?" 

John walked over to the window that looked out on the motel parking lot. The sickly yellow light illuminating the walkway made the scratch on his face look black. 

"I got done early, thought I'd see how you were doing with that chupacabra." 

"I… It's dead. Got it boxed in today and killed it. Salted and burned the body, just to be safe." 

"Good. Good to hear." There was something off in his voice. 

Things had been bad since Sam left. There was a hollowness where he had been, a look to the left always expecting to find him there having their backs. Dean had gotten used to their father's abandonment, because there wasn't anything else he could do about it, but Sam… Dean would never have left Sam. Never. Not after everything they'd been through. Finding out that Sam didn't feel the same had been a low blow. 

John had been explosive at first. Dean had to fight every natural instinct to duck around his father in those first few days. They'd been hunting vampires, and when they found the nest and beheaded the lot of them, John started punching up the walls of the dirty old farmhouse the vamps had been squatting in. He'd practically torn the place down with his bare hands. 

Dean understood the feeling. 

He'd thought, somewhere deep down and unacknowledged, that maybe at least he and his dad would be closer. Maybe if it was just the two of them, John could spare some of the love he'd had for Sam. The two of them always fought, but at least there was heat in it. Even when John had hit Dean, when he was younger, it had been disciplinary, dispassionate. With Sam, the verbal arguments were tempests. Even Dean couldn't always defuse them, no matter how hard he tried to keep the peace. 

"What's next? Are we still heading out to the crop failures in Illinois?" 

Dean sat down on the spot his father had vacated and pulled the bag from under the bed. He did a compulsive inventory of his weapons and supplies just to have something to do with his hands. 

Holy water.

Rocksalt. 

Shotgun rounds. 

Steel. 

Silver. 

"No. No, I think it's better if we split up again. We'll cover more ground. You take Illinois, there's something I want to see in Missouri. We'll check in in a week at the crossroads outside Springfield." 

Dean looked up at the back of his father's leather jacket. It shouldn't have stung after all this time, but it did. 

"Sure you don't need me for Missouri? The crops could be nothing." 

"I'm sure." 

John was still looking out the window, his back stiff. 

Dean glanced at what little of the glass his father wasn't blocking and realized with a shuddering, sinking feeling that the view from the motel was a clear shot to the Impala. The car was parked in the shadows of a big oak tree and Dean couldn't really make out the interior from the room, but he realized he didn't know where his father had parked, or how long he'd been waiting there. 

Dean's voice abandoned him. He hadn't even processed what had just happened with Graves. A moment before, his stomach had been warm with whiskey and mutual admiration. Now he felt flushed with guilt and shame. 

John finally turned away from the window. He still didn't look at Dean. 

"I'm going to head out, get an early start on the road." 

"I - dad, it can wait 'til morning. Get some sleep here at least, you drove all the way out." 

There it was again, Dean practically begging his dad to stay. He should have been used to the leaving by then. But he was used to taking care of John, too, used to helping him stumble into bed drunk, used to making sure he remembered to drink water with his whiskey, used to washing off the blood and sewing up the cuts. Dean was used to reminding his father that he had to sleep, eat, take care of his injuries. Things were worse for everyone when he didn't. 

"I'm good, Dean. Listen…" John kept his eyes on the floor for a moment before he looked up fixing his gaze just beyond Dean. He wouldn't look him in the eye and his voice was gruff. "You still taking care of that car, boy?" 

"Yes, sir." Dean swallowed, waiting. But the blow - verbal, physical, it wouldn't have mattered - never came. 

"Good. I'll see you in Springfield." 

John had walked out of the motel room, and they'd never said another word about that night. 

They didn't need to. Dean didn't know what his father might or might not have seen, but he'd decided it didn't matter. The thing with Graves had just been… a fluke. An experiment. A moment of loneliness and loss at the hands of a bottle of whiskey. And if it was something that him feel that much shame in the presence of his father, if his dad couldn't even _look_ at him… 

It wasn't who Dean was. Things just happened, sometimes. It hadn't happened again. 

***  
  


The trees creak in the darkness. Dean hates woods at night. Anything could be hiding anywhere. It's a setting he can't control. 

Maybe everyone in this universe is gone. Maybe it's all another mind game. Maybe none of it really matters anymore. 

Dean has been tired for so long.

The tape runs out and it's just aggressive static on the stereo, the volume turned up too loud. For almost a minute, neither of them touches it or says anything. Then Sam finally lets out a sigh and opens the passenger-side compartment, digging out the cassette box. 

"What do you want?" he asks. 

"Finally. Zeppelin, man." 

Sam sighs a little louder this time, but he exchanges the tapes. 

Dean acknowledges this by turning the volume back down to a pleasant level. 

Except that, he can't help but feel everything in his gut clenching when he thinks about the mixtape he made for Cas of Zeppelin songs. About Cas, still not quite human after all this time, not understanding the nature of gifts. That a gift was something you gave without hope or expectation of return. 

_It's in just being._

Sam turns away from the passenger window at the loud thud. It seems that Dean has just punched the car door with his left hand. He's rubbing his knuckles with his right hand and Sam recognizes the look on his face. To the casual observer, maybe Dean looks blank or angry, but Sam can _feel_ him practically falling apart in front of him. 

"Dean." 

"Sorry, Sammi. I'm good." 

"You're not good. Look -" 

"Sam, I swear, if you say we need to talk about this one more time, I will leave you to wait alone. Okay? There's nothing to talk about." 

Sam gives it a beat. He takes a breath, closes his eyes, opens them again. 

"Cas is dead." He lets the words hang on their own. His voice is close to catching. 

"Dammit, Sam!" Dean bangs his fist against the door again. The frame rattles. "There's nothing to talk about. We're all probably going to be dead or vanished in hours, so just… What's the point? We just go on and do what we always do. Hell, we've all died so many times at this point, what is there left to say about it?" 

"The point is that it still matters that he's gone. He's family, and he's gone." 

"I'm not… I can't do this right now." 

Dean gets out of the car, slamming the door behind him. He looks away from the Impala, into the darkness, into nothing. He feels his eyes tearing up and rubs his hand over his face. 

_You changed me, Dean._

Dean hears Sam getting out of the car too, and dammit, can't his brother for once just leave things alone? 

Sam always needs to talk about things. He always wants to take out his emotions and lay them down in alphabetical order and look at them. Dean doesn't know where the hell he learned to do that, because it certainly wasn't from him or John. Dean had learned everything he knew about suppressing his emotions from his father. He'd tried not to be that way with Sam when they were younger. He'd just wanted Sam to be a kid. For his little brother not to feel the brunt of always waiting for their dad to come back to wherever he'd left them, not to wonder what they'd do if one day he didn't come back. Maybe shielding Sam back then had worked. If so, it really had a way of coming back to bite Dean in the ass.

"I'm grieving too." Sam's voice over the roof of the Impala is quiet. "I think we need to at least acknowledge it, or…" 

Dean lets out a humorless laugh. "Or what, Sam? We get distracted from our impossible task of fighting God? I hate to break it to you, but losing Cas again doesn't change a damn thing about how hopeless this is. I mean, we're crazy! We're fighting _God_. That's the only goddamn thing I want to think about right now." 

"This is exactly how it changes things, Dean. You lose hope. When we lose someone, when we lose Cas, you spiral. I mean, look, I do too. It feels like there's this colossal weight on my chest all the time. But at least I know why I wake up feeling like I can't breathe. I can't bottle that up or pretend like it doesn't exist, or it would kill me. The way it's killing you." 

The wind sends Sam's hair into his face and when he pushes it back, Dean is staring at him with anger flashing warning signs everywhere in his face. 

"So, what, are you trying to tell me I can't handle it the way you can?" 

"What? No, of course not -" 

"Because I've buried just as many ghosts as you, Sam, and looks like I'm still here kicking." Dean kicks at the gravel road in emphasis and rocks going flying around them. 

"I'm just saying," Sam says calmly, patiently, resting his arms on top of the Impala. He's tired too. "I think you should talk to me about what happened back there." 

_I've always wondered, ever since I took that deal, I've wondered…_

"Sam." Dean turns away and looks up at the night sky. It's cloudy, no stars to be seen. He remembers the night the angels fell, the way the sky was full of the brightest meteors earth had ever beheld. It was the first time he thought about Cas _falling._ Castiel's true form tumbling out of heaven, burning like a celestial death, like a cosmic event. 

"I'm begging you, man - " Dean's interrupted by the sound of footsteps. He and Sam turn in unison, Sam reaching inside his jacket for an angel blade, Dean hoisting the shotgun he's been holding at his side. 

It's just Jack, standing there with that slight smirk on his face like always, in spite of everything. 

"Okay," he says, flexing his hands. "We're good. Let's go." 

Sam catches Dean's eye before they get back into the car, his eyes pleading and soulful as only Sam Winchester's can be. Dean gets in and turns the stereo back up, gut-wrenching music or not. 

There are just some things Dean can't say to Sam. 

***  
  
Except, it wasn't just the one man, really. Of course it wasn't. Not with the types of places John Winchester used to leave his kids. Not with a kid as _pretty_ as Dean. This was easy math. The only surprising thing was that it never went farther. Take a kid and abandon him, abuse him, make him into a proxy partner for his father and parent for his little brother while he's still a child. Treat him like nothing he does will ever be enough when he can't rise to these roles. Make him feel worthless. Make him desperate for any form of love. 

John would never, ever have touched Dean like that. But he'd groomed him for it all the same. 

It was a handful of touches in quiet mornings in strangers' living rooms, before Sam woke up, gruff whispers telling him to be careful not to wake the baby, or being groped in the dark corner of a bar when he went out to hustle pool money, or a hunter as old as their father with tobacco on his breath whispering all the things he'd like to do to a pretty boy like Dean for a full half hour before John had come back. 

Dean never said anything. When he was younger, he'd thought it was his fault, that some lack of _machismo_ made him a target the same way it made him never quite good enough for his father. If he was just stronger, gruffer, less pretty, if he became someone you couldn't look at without cutting yourself on… 

Once or twice, when he was angry and bitter, he'd wondered if John hadn't known. 

Surely, he must have known the type of people he was leaving his boys with. They weren't all Bobby. How could he not have known? How could he not have cared? 

All Dean could think about whenever one of the men around looked at him a little too long was making sure they never looked at Sam. That Sam could never know. He'd understood, somewhere in his illogical brain, that these sorts of things weren't supposed to happen to children. That children were supposed to be protected. He'd just never thought of himself as a child. 

***

The bunker is quiet. It's always quiet, but this time it feels like a pointed silence. It's absence. 

Sam gets three beers from the fridge and puts them on the table. Jack and Sam sit, and Dean stands, gripping the back of a chair with his free hand and hoping the beer numbs him soon. Now that they're not the move, now that they're back home, there's every danger of the memory catching up to Dean. It happened here, after all. Too much death had happened here, for a place that was supposed to be a home. 

"To Cas," Sam says gruffly. They raise the bottles and drink. The absence fills up the room again. 

"There's something I don't understand," Sam says after a minute. He says it cautiously, like he's probing the water before taking the jump. 

"Yeah?" Dean's voice sinks to gravel levels as he narrows his eyes at Sam. He tries to tell him silently _not in front of the kid_ , but of course Sam knows exactly what he's doing. He knows that Dean will work harder to control his temper with Jack around, that Dean still feels guilty for the time he spent hating Jack, resenting him for Cas' death. 

"You said Cas summoned the Empty." Sam drums his fingers on the table. "How? It doesn't make sense. How could he just call it at will? And why did it take him and Death, but not you?" 

Jack sits up straight, suddenly putting the pieces together. "He made a deal." Jack's face is always soft, somehow. Dean finds it hard to direct his anger toward him now, even after everything. But he wants to. God, he wants to tell him to shut up. 

"Cas, he made a deal. For me. When I was dying. The Empty would take him instead. But… it would only come for him later, when he experienced a moment of true happiness. So that he would experience true loss in the moment he had the most to lose. But…" Jack looks from Dean to Sam and back. 

"A moment of true happiness? What could have made Cas happy while you were being hunted by Death?" Sam's eyebrows crease together and he looks to Dean. Dean looks up at the ceiling and closes his eyes, takes a deep breath. 

_I wondered…_

Sam's mouth opens slightly and his eyes go wide. "Oh. You didn't… did you?" He gestures vaguely, ludicrously, at around crotch height. 

"What? No." Dean lets go of the chair and steps back from the table, swigging most of the bottle in one go. "Cas and I did not bone in a demon trap supply closet so he could summon his own death." 

Sam holds up his hands, but his eyes are too understanding. "Okay, okay. It's just, you know, Angel." 

"What?" Dean can't follow Sam's words, and it's not just because his heart is pounding in anticipation of having to explain, of having to tell anyone what Cas told him. There are some things Dean Winchester just cannot say. 

Jack's frowning at Sam too. "What's being an angel got to do with it?" 

Sam gives a tired little laugh. He's abandoned his own beer. "Not an angel. Angel. From Buffy the Vampire Slayer?" When both Dean and Jack tilt their heads at him, Sam sighs. "Look, it's just, in Buffy, the character named Angel is cursed to lose his soul after a moment of true happiness. And that happens when he and Buffy, you know…" Sam glances at Jack. "Uh. Make love." 

"Christ, Sam." Dean turns away from them both, leans back against the edge of the table, looking away into the shadows of the room. He can't look at them and say this. He can't say this. 

Dean clears his throat. "He just, uh. Cas, he said… Well, he told me… He…" 

_What could my true happiness even look like?_

Dean is glad he turned away before the tears started. He can see Cas' face back in front of him, crying, weeping, confessing, and Dean had just stood there like a stone, like a monster, as his best friend in the world told him… 

"He just told me he loved me, that's all." 

In spite of himself, Dean turns around to see Sam's expression. It's less surprised than Dean would have liked. "He told me he loved me, and then he died, like everyone else who’s ever given a damn about us. Mom, dad, Jesse, Bobby, Cas, Kevin, mom again.”

“I’ve also died,” Jack offers. 

Dean gestures across the table at him. “Jack. You. Me. We’re fucking cursed, man. I’m… You should never die just because you love someone. That’s not right. It’s not the kind of universe I want to live in.”

“I know.” Sam’s voice has gotten very quiet. “You’re right. Dean, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

“Yeah, well.” Dean passes his hands over his cheek and runs them through his hair. “Call me crazy, Sam, but you don’t seem shocked by this information.” 

Sam shifts in his chair and Dean catches the look that passes between him and Jack. 

“What?” 

“It’s just, uh.” Sam hesitates. “We all kind of… knew?” 

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” 

“Just, uh, the way that Cas… I mean, you know, the whole “profound bond” thing.” Sam shrugs apologetically. “The crazy comic con shippers from Chuck’s novels, the way he looks - looked at you. And, well. He fell from Heaven for you, Dean. He lost his grace, his faith, he rebelled against God before we even knew what he was rebelling against. And he did it, all of it, for you.” 

“For us.” Dean can’t quite believe they’re just having this conversation, like any of it makes sense. 

Sam shakes his head. “Look, I love Cas like a brother. I’m devastated that he’s gone. And I know that he loved us all like family. But, it’s not - it wasn’t… Ten thousand years of faith, Dean, and he gave that up for you. Not me, not Bobby, just you. Because he believed in you.” 

_I cared because you cared._

Dean can’t. He just can’t. 

“And look how that turned out.” 

Sam stands up and Dean takes a step back, because if Sam or anyone else touches him right now, he will fracture. There are fault lines running all along his body, pinpricks of pain waiting to collapse in on themselves or explode, Dean isn’t sure which yet. He doesn’t know if he wants to die or kill someone else. Probably both. Definitely both. 

“This isn’t your fault,” Sam says. 

Dean shakes his head. “Of course it is, Sammi. Of course it is.” 

When he can shake Sam off, Dean retreats to his room. He doesn’t look down any corridors on the way. He can still hear Death’s scythe scraping along the walls of the bunker. 

Even after the years that they’ve spent here, it still feels strange to have a bedroom. It feels weird to have anywhere to lay his head more than a couple of times a year, a place to come back to, a place to rest. The closest they’d ever come before must have been Bobby’s house, but still, they’d always been visitors. 

Dean always wanted a place to hang posters. 

The quiet absence is too much to take again. Dean can hear his own heartbeat in his ears. He tries turning on Guns N’ Roses but that only makes it worse somehow. Deans sits on the bed and just tries to breathe, but he can’t stand it. He slides to the floor. 

It’s easier on his knees, for reasons Dean can’t explain. Maybe because this is what it looks like in the movies, maybe because it already feels like supplicating himself just to kneel, like there’s a tiny sacrifice in the act of praying. 

“Cas, I don’t know if you can hear me,” he starts. He always starts that way. “I don’t know if you get a signal, down in… Well, probably not. But if you can hear me, you son of a bitch, we’re getting you back. I’m going to bring you back.” 

_Because the one thing I want, it’s something I know I can’t have._

“You can’t go out like this, man. You can’t. You can’t just leave like this. Cas, I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” Dean stops. He’s crying again. It feels like he hasn’t stopped crying since Cas was taken. 

“Dammit.” Dean wipes his face. He takes deep, shuddering breaths. Miracles have happened before. Cas has heard him before, come back before. 

“Look, you know I’m no good at this. Talking. Feelings. Any of it. I’m not… I don’t know, man. Something’s broken in here, and I don’t know how to fix it. I never have. You know me, it’s like my anger. I don’t know where it comes from or why there’s so much of it inside of me. I don’t know when to put it away.

“ I don’t know what love is. All I’ve ever known is _this_. Saving people, hunting things. The family business. And lately there hasn’t been a whole lot of saving. Sometimes I think… I think about just being somewhere on a beach or a pier. You, me, Sam, some beers. Jack’s not there because he’s off at college getting to know real kids. You’re still wearing your stupid trench coat even though it’s 80 degrees out. Sam and I are making fun of you for it, and everyone’s just… alive. Not even happy. Just… there. Present. 

“But if we’re there, who’s doing the job? Who’s hunting? We can’t leave this life. I can’t leave this life. And love, in this life, it’s always been a weakness. I mean, look at me. How many times have I let some demon or whatever use you, or Sam, or Jack against me? Love in this life will just kill the people you’d die to protect. I decided a long time ago I couldn’t bring anyone into this anymore. But, if…” 

Dean stops again. He’s not crying anymore, but he can’t breathe. 

_I love you._

“Dammit, Cas, don’t make me say it.” Dean struggles with the words, feeling like the prayer has already gotten away from him. “I need you. I need you here. We’ll work out the rest. I…” 

Dean struggles for what feels like minutes, but the words aren’t coming. He clears his throat before he finishes his prayer.. “You changed me too. You saved me. Not just saved my life, you saved me. I’m not going to leave you there. 

“I don’t know if you can hear me, but I’ve got you. I’ve got you, Cas.” 

_Goodbye, Dean._

  
  
  
  
  



	2. Be something you can love and understand

It's the road again. 

God is dead, functionally speaking. Jack is God, which makes Jack functionally dead. Cas is dead. Eileen is dead. 

In some ways, Dean can't help thinking in the bitterest part of his soul, Jack isn't much better than Chuck in terms of the "why" department. He'd reverse-Thanos-snapped or whatever all these people back into the world, but not Eileen? Not Cas, his own chosen father? The futility of the frustration simmers somewhere in the pit of Dean's stomach. This isn't what they deserve. 

But maybe that's the point, after all. When have the Winchester boys, or anyone they really loved, ever gotten what they deserve? Maybe that's just the universe they live in. Maybe Jack is just keeping the balance by not giving them back what they've lost. 

It's useless to ask why. 

They're on the road again, and Sam's gangly legs are too long for him to be sleeping in the backseat, but Dean sleeps better in the Impala than in any motel room, so that's what they're doing. 

The first few days are mostly silence. Dean drives, and Sam stares out the window. Sam drives, and Dean pretends to sleep, or he looks for cases. 

For once, Sam lets him have the silence. They're working through it; alone, but together. Sam thinks about all of the things he should have said to Eileen. He admired her, more than he’d really wanted to let himself understand. He thinks about Jack, the kid - _their_ kid - that they couldn’t protect. He hadn’t known that about himself, that he’d always wanted to be a father, until he was already right in the middle of it. Sam could only picture himself as a father the way he remembered Dean raising him. He knew how much Dean had sacrificed for him, before his soul had ever entered into the equation, before he’d come knocking at Sam’s college dorm. Sam loved their father, differently than Dean did, but he did still love him. That didn’t mean that he could forget the countless nights in motel rooms that smelled of cigarettes and worse, with Dean telling him it was okay, assuring him that dad would be back soon, that he, Dean, would never let anything happen to Sam. 

Dean used to sing him to sleep. Sam never told Dean that he remembers this, but he can recall many nights curled up under the covers with Dean sitting on the edge of his bed singing Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Simple Man.” It always made Sam feel watched over. Safe.

Sam smiles a little to himself at the memory. He glances over at Dean, asleep and drooling in the passenger seat at the moment. Maybe they aren’t whole, maybe they are still mourning everything they’ve lost. But they saved the world, again. 

God is dead. 

And Sam, looking at his brother while the engine purrs a different kind of lullaby, Sam feels safe. 

For Dean, it’s somewhere around Akron that he decides to be over it. If he can’t work himself out of the darkness, then he’ll use brute force. Fake it ‘til you make it, baby. 

It helps that he’s found a case. It helps, too, that the case is a legacy. They haven’t worked something from dad’s journal in a while. 

When Sam, with those puppy-dog eyes and that sad face that makes Dean desperate to fix things, tells him he’s thinking about Cas, about Jack, Dean lets out a breath he feels like he’s been holding for several miles of driving now. 

_I love you._

Dean has always tried to outrun pain. He’s always stuffed it down deep in his chest, at least until Sam comes around and pulls it out of him with those sad, sad eyes. 

It’s been two weeks, give or take, since their world ended and started again. They are the original members of Team Free Will, the club paired down to the bone. Dean can survive with just Sammi. He knows he can. He knows that at some point, Sam is likely to drag that pain out of his chest and make him _talk_ about it. No matter what Dean says about letting go and sacrifice. But for the moment, there is denial and pie. That’s enough. 

***

When it happens, Dean’s first thought is _Really? Like_ this _?_

He can feel the metal bar deep inside him, mixing rust and blood, suddenly the thing killing him and keeping him from bleeding out instantly. 

That’s the thing. 

This is how it always is. 

The reason they’re always watching, waiting, never able to relax, is because to be a hunter means knowing that any day could be your last, any job could be the one that takes you out. It could have been anything, anytime, any place. 

It just happens, for Dean, to be here and now. 

For a fraction of a second, it’s almost funny. They defeated God. The Winchester boys fought Heaven and Hell and came back breathing. They took on legion. They lost everyone and everything. They clawed their way back from the apocalypse - time and again. They saved the world. 

But maybe, Dean thinks as he coughs and feels the blood working its way into his lungs, as Sam finishes off the vampires and finally sees what’s happened, as his face contorts with pain, maybe this is the world without God. Maybe the whole damn point is that they are not special. Maybe in a world without divine plan or intervention, Dean Winchester dying in the line of duty makes sense. It isn’t glory. It isn’t justice or retribution. It’s just chance. 

The universe is chaos and statistical entropy. Dean has already been given more chances than any one person could expect to have. This isn’t exactly comforting, it isn’t even a fully conscious thought in his head, it’s just something he understands as Sam rushes toward him and stops, hovering, too far away. 

Dean stops thinking about “why” for a moment. He slips back to the person he was when he thought he knew how he would go - just like this, or with a ghost’s hand on his heart, or at the end of a gun. 

He needs Sammi. He needs his brother. 

He doesn’t know what he’s saying, really, but then Sam is there, holding onto him, gripping Dean as if he is the one clinging to life. And Dean is trying to make it okay. He wants to make it okay for his little brother. For his Sammi. 

“I love you so much,” he says. He’s never said it like this. It’s never been torn out of him the way it is now, gasped right from his belly, right from his chest, from everything in him. “My baby brother.” 

He’s always wanted to tell Sam. He doesn’t know why it’s been so hard all their lives. Love is in everything they do. It’s in the fixed-up injuries, the punches they’ve landed on each other, the sweat and dirt of the road. It’s in the last bowl of cereal, in a Christmas present, in telling each other it will be alright. 

His baby brother. His son twice over. His Sammi. 

Dean Winchester is dying. 

The Winchester boys are alone, crying, loving so hard it hurts.

“It’s okay, Dean. You can go now.” 

Dean is dying. 

He’s dying. 

And then he’s just… gone. 

***

Sam doesn’t stop crying for what feels like hours - for miles, for days. He has to do it all himself, has to lift his brother off that pipe, carry his body, dress the wound, cover the body, salt and burn it, bury the ashes. 

He’s crying when Eileen finally finds him, days later, sitting alone on a park bench. 

***

Heaven is different than Dean remembers. It’s perfect, but not in a creepy way. It’s just… nice. It feels good, and not like any memory Dean can call to mind. 

“Well, at least I made it into Heaven,” he says aloud to himself, because up until that moment, he really wasn’t sure. After everything, all of the mistakes he’d made, all of the things that he had done, the good and the bad, Dean was never really sure if he deserved this. 

“Yep,” says a voice. 

If someone had asked Dean who he most wanted to greet him at Heaven’s gates, he would have overthought it, but now that it’s Bobby, Dean feels a peaceful certainty that there is no one else it could have been for him. Bobby, the father figure who loved him outright, who didn’t need him to die or to time travel in order to see it. Bobby, who was the closest thing to family Dean had grown up knowing. Of course. 

Dean sits down outside the roadhouse. As Bobby’s handing him a beer and explaining Heaven, Dean looks around and thinks how odd it is to feel the peace of this place. 

“Your kid did good,” Bobby’s saying, a slightly begrudging smile beneath his beard. 

Dean looks away from the beauty surrounding them and stares at Bobby. “Jack did all of this?”

“Well,” Bobby shrugs. “Cas helped.” 

Dean can’t help the smile that spreads across his face. Cas and Jack, rebuilding Heaven together. A little father-son DIY project. It’s perfect. It explains everything, explains why Cas wasn’t back on earth with them. 

“Son of a bitch. Cas is here?” Dean doesn’t bother to keep the hope out of his voice. This is Heaven. What’s the point of Heaven without hope?

“Ah. Well.” Bobby’s face twitches a little bit, and Dean’s stomach almost starts to sink, even in all this calm, tranquil nature. “Not exactly.” 

“What do you mean ‘not exactly’?” 

“He comes and goes.”

“Okay.” Dean leans forward. “Bobby, what the hell are you dancing around?”

“Hold your horses, boy, I’m getting there.” Bobby hesitates one more moment, then sighs. He leans back and sips from his beer. “Your kid is the new god, and he’s doing a bang up job as far as I can tell. And Cas… your angel is the new Death.”

For a moment, Dean feels all the old familiar spiking of dread, the anticipation that he’s about to have to fight, that he’s about to have to fix things, to rescue Cas from this. But Bobby’s just looking at him calmly, sipping his beer. 

Slowly, a smile starts to spread over Dean’s face, until it’s a grin, until it’s a laugh coming out of his mouth. Bobby smiles along with him, clearly understanding. 

Cas is Death. A caring, compassionate Death. A Death who will love and cherish every human soul that he reaps. A Death who is God’s father, and God’s friend. A Death who loves humanity with everything that is in him. 

_I cared about the whole world because of you._

It doesn’t matter how it happened, only that this makes sense. This seems fair.

Dean raises his beer to Bobby and they clink bottles. Dean is still grinning as he downs his. There are still things to figure out in this new Heaven. There are still people to find. There’s still Sam to watch over. But that will come. For the moment, there is just the Heaven he’s never believed he deserved. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have not watched the finale (or any full episodes of season 15), so ignore any small discrepancies, I'M FIXING AS FAST AS I CAN


	3. In other words

Time works differently here. If four months on earth is forty years in Hell, then something like the opposite is true of Heaven. Years pass not as months exactly, but in just as long as Dean needs, and not more than he can stand. 

Dean spends the first year hunting down all the corners and cracks in Heaven, trying to find something wrong, something he needs to kill or fix. He can't help it. Even in the tranquility, even though emotions are different here and nothing feels particularly urgent or threatening anymore, Dean is still himself. Everyone just kind of lets him work through it. Most of them went through something similar, although maybe for Dean it's that he can't quite accept that good things do happen. Not to him. Not indefinitely. 

It takes the first year to stop looking over his shoulder. To start to heal. It isn't an instantaneous thing, and Dean is secretly, quietly grateful for that. It wouldn't feel right, wouldn't feel real, if it was too easy all at once. 

Dean spends a lot of evenings with Bobby, many of them at the roadhouse with Ellen, Jo and Ash. Sometimes Mary, John, Rufus, and Aretha join them. It's not that everything has been forgiven or forgotten. It's just that in Heaven… emotions are strange things. They're closer to pure. Other people's choices seem clearer. Even when it isn't said with words, Dean can understand what's going on with his family - all of them - and what they need from him, where he fits in, what makes sense for his own peace of mind. It's simpler here. 

***

The first time Dean visits Mary and John, he finds an Impala out in front of their perfect little white-walled house. Even though it's the same car, Dean knows it's not Baby in the same way he knows that his parents aren't the same John and Mary Winchester that he's ever really known. 

John is out front chopping wood. He's wearing a red flannel shirt, blue jeans and black boots. When Mary comes out the front door with her arms full of gardening tools, she's dressed in almost the same outfit - boots, jeans, and a purple flannel. She smiles wide and her eyes light up when she sees Dean. It makes his heart - and, huh, interesting to know he still experiences the funny human quirks of a living body- contract in his chest. He grins back at her. 

"John," Mary calls over her shoulder. John looks up and sets down his axe. He smiles at Dean too, and it's a little sad but Dean has never seen him look so rested and… happy. 

Mary hugs Dean with all the familiar strength and he holds her tight, closing his eyes and breathing in the smell of his mom. 

Things aren't quite right with Mary. They never have been. But here, in Heaven, Dean understands that there is nothing but time to fix that, if he wants to. Already, without a word, Dean understands more about who his mother really is than he could ever let himself on earth. 

She's a person. 

It was hard for him to accept that before. 

"Dean." John is standing there with them when Mary lets go of Dean, pats him tenderly on the cheek and steps back with tears in her eyes. 

"Dad." There are tears in Dean's eyes too, and for once it doesn't matter. There's no pretending here. There's no need to toughen up, put on a brave face, be daddy's little soldier. There's just this: All the pain between them, and all the understanding they never had the words or the time for in life. 

John holds out his arms, tears streaking down his own cheeks. Dean steps into his father's embrace and for the first time it doesn't feel conditional. 

"My boy. Dean. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, son, for everything." John's rough voice speaks directly into Dean's ear as he holds him harder and longer than he ever has. They stand like that for some time, feeling their way through things. Dean is overwhelmed by it, but it's nice. He's not self-conscious about crying in his father's arms, and John just holds him, exactly the way he should have held Dean as a child and never did, at least not after Mary died. 

They can't work through everything in one hug. But it's something. It's a start. 

***

Dean spends most of the first year driving as he looks for the dark side of this place. He doesn't need to sleep, but sometimes he can make time pass just by laying down in the Impala and thinking about nothing. 

When he finally stops looking for demons everywhere, he finds a run down little house next to a creek. He fixes the place up himself. He finds that whenever he needs to learn how to do something, a book appears, or sometimes Bobby, and he can figure it out. 

Dean appreciates that Heaven doesn't just insert the knowledge into his brain directly. Dean was never good at school, but he's always liked learning things. Not literature analysis or calculus or whatever, but how things work and why. Now that he has time, he finds that this extends beyond cars and houses. He teaches himself about the different kinds of fish in the creek, how to cook them properly, and new techniques for fishing. He puts a porch swing up and reads books he never had time for before. He's not sure if the novels are exactly the same as they are on earth, because they all end in surprisingly satisfying ways and Dean doesn't remember anyone in school mentioning a three-way in any of the classics. 

Jo comes over some afternoons and they play cards on the porch or she lets him teach her how to grill, or they just drink beer and watch all of the little growing things in Dean's yard. It helps to have someone who feels like a little sibling. 

Dean discovers that sometimes when he's laying in the Impala, not sleeping, he can check-in on Sam. The time-lapse is weird at first, because he's not where Dean left him. It's a little heartbreaking, to watch Sam fight alone. Dean catches him making a fist and touching it to his heart before a fight, and he comes back to Baby with his eyes wet. 

But of course, Sam's not alone. He has Eileen, who, Dean has to admit, kicks ass. Dean checks in, but he doesn't watch. Sam isn't a show, not the way the Winchesters were for Chuck. He's doing what Dean asked of him, living his life, fighting, as best he can. Dean misses him more than he knows what to do with, but he knows Bobby is right too. Sam will be along. 

***

There are other parts of Heaven. Dean learns that Adam is there with his mom, a drive that always feels just too far to make. John visits sometimes and Dean tries to accept this. He can't fully, but it doesn't fill him with the bitter rage he once felt about it. His father is who he is. He was who he was. Trying to make him something else is like being angry at the sun. There's nothing but time to come to terms with that, if Dean wants to. 

Dean's grandparents are nearby, but they don't come around often. Pamela is around somewhere, eyesight fully restored. Dean even runs into Missouri, who he hasn't thought about in years. 

Of course, besides Sam, there are two profound absences. Bobby says that Cas and Jack are "around", which is a little infuriating. Dean prays to them sometimes. He doesn't get a response, but he thinks they hear him. 

He sees Jack first, in a manner of speaking. Dean's taking a long drive when has the passing desire to get out and stretch his legs. A moment later he comes to a spot on the empty highway with a wide shoulder and just beyond the road a meadow so pretty it could make a man weep. 

Dean smiles and gets out of the car, stretching. He doesn't really need to, his body never seems to ache or cramp here, but it's habit. It's human. 

He walks into the meadow and looks around at the green, green grass and the patches of little yellow and white flowers. It's a kind of peaceful he never felt when he was alive. 

It starts to rain as he stands there, a light warm summer rain with the sun still shining through the clouds, turning droplets into sparkling dew as it settles in the flowers and his hair. 

Dean remembers what Jack said the last time he saw him. _I'll be in every drop of rain._

Dean grins and closes his eyes, feeling the rain wash over him.

"Hey kid," he says. "It's good to hear from you. I'm proud of you, Jack. I'm damn proud." 

After a little while the shower stops, and Jack's presence fades. Dean opens his eyes again and looks at the now sparkling meadow. Now that he's felt it, he understands. Jack _is_ there. He's in everything. 

***

It's two years of earth time before Cas shows up. 

Two years in, the last time Dean checked in on Sam, he was down on one knee, signing the question "Will you marry me?" 

Maybe it's soon, maybe it isn't. What does Dean know? He's just grateful that Sam will have a family in his life. Dean misses him more than anything, but he wants Sam to be happy. He thinks that's possible for Sam in a way that he never saw for himself. 

After being dead for two years, however time works in Heaven, Dean's pretty well-adjusted to how he went out. It feels like how it was supposed to be. When he tries to think of a future on earth where he grew old and retired from the job, or worked until he was too injured or feeble to do it anymore, or even the wild possibility of leaving that life and running away to some beach with Sam… Dean can't see it. He can't picture it in his head. He was always going to die with a gun in his hand. His only regret is the pain it causes Sam. 

There's a place Dean likes to drive to at night to be alone and look at the stars. It's not the Grand Canyon, or Yellowstone, or Yosemite, but it's something like all of these. There's a slab of rock at the edge of a lookout that hangs above a deep canyon. A river runs through the bottom of the basin, and more trees than Dean can fathom grow in the forests to either side. Sometimes he leans against his car and drinks a beer while looking at the view, but tonight he lays on the slab on his back with his arms under his head. 

The stars are different here too. There are constellations that Dean recognizes, but there are so many more that he doesn't. Even in places with zero light pollution, Dean is pretty sure he's seeing more of the cosmos than he ever could on earth. 

Dean never had time for things like astronomy. He regrets that now and he wonders if Heaven might let him find a very, very beginner's book on astrophysics and maybe a telescope. 

There's a slight rustle above him. Dean cranes his head back without sitting up, and sure enough, there is Castiel, appearing upside down in his view, but the same Cas in his same trenchcoat, still looking perpetually windblown. 

"Hello, Dean." 

Dean hadn't realized how much he missed that gravelly voice. 

"Hi ya, Cas." Dean sits up but doesn't stand or turn around. Cas joins him on the rock. 

"You can see all the stars and planets that have lived and died since the universe was created," Cas says without prompting. "That's why it looks different here. All the light that might take a million years to reach earth, or faded millions of years before humans evolved, it all reaches Heaven. At least when people want to see it." 

Dean lets out a long breath. The stars have always filled him with a deep aching sensation he didn't fully understand. In Heaven, he thinks he does. What he was really feeling was the _mysterium tremendum;_ the great and terrible awe of God. Dean never felt that way about Chuck, but seeing the universe… there was something so incomprehensible in it. 

"Can you hear my thoughts now? Did Heaven send you just because I was wondering about the stars?" 

"No, of course not. Dean…" Cas pauses for a long time as they look up at the sky together. "I would have come sooner if I could. Jack and I have been trying to untangle Chuck's messes, and I've been busy with Death. I assume Bobby told you." 

"He did." 

"It's more work than I could have imagined." 

"I figured." Dean turns to look Cas up and down. He looks the same, no better or worse than usual. "Do you… need help?" 

"With being Death?" Cas shakes his head, smiling. "No. No, I won't take your help with this one. This is something I have to do. And…" His gaze goes far again, looking out over the canyon. It feels like the dreams Dean used to have about them together on a pier. "I want to do it. I wasn't a good God, Dean. You know that. I… wanted too much to _fix_ things. I had too strong of loyalties. I couldn't let anything just _be,_ just come into its own. Jack's doing that. Oh, a little nudge here, a little push there, but for the most part it's…" Cas gestures vaguely over the ledge. "It's not part of some great cosmic plan. It just is. It's just life. And death. And death is very… administrative. I'm keeping track of the numbers." 

"So you're God's accountant?" 

Cas smiles down at his own lap. "Perhaps more of a librarian. There are more systems to work with. That's what Jack and I are trying to figure out now. Did it ever seem fair to you, Heaven and Hell? Even purgatory? Souls are more complicated than pure and evil. And then there's the angels, the other immortals. We can't come to this Heaven anymore, but do we all deserve the Empty? All of that, that was all Chuck. It was Chuck who decided that some people deserved eternal punishment. Jack's not so sure. He's trying to come up with an alternative." 

Dean nods, quiet for a moment as he digests this. When he was alive, he was angrier. Angry enough to think that maybe there were souls that deserved endless torment. But he still remembers Hell. Not just what he did there - and if any soul is stained, surely his is one of them - but who he did it to. Some of them were so young. He remembers that. Surely, they had died too young to have proven themselves so unworthy of Heaven. 

"So how'd it happen, Cas? Did Jack rescue you and offer you the job, or...?" It's hard to be nervous in Heaven, but not impossible, apparently. They're edging closer to the last time they saw each other. Dean thought he was ready for it, but he's not. He's still himself. He's not good at talking, not good at any of this. 

Cas sighs. He rests his hands on the rock and leans back, tilting his head up with his eyes closed. 

"No, it wasn't Jack. It was Billie. When we were pulled into the Empty, she was already dying. So she offered me her scythe, and her mantle." 

"Why? She was trying to kill you." 

"She wanted to kill _you_ ," Cas corrects him. "I was just in the way." 

"Okay, but…" 

"I don't think I was her first choice, but I was her only option. Either I became Death, or no one did. Better to have someone you don't like but think is competent than to leave the position empty, I suppose." Cas sighs and mutters "' _And death once dead/There's no more dying then.'"_

"What's that? Some sort of… spell, or edict, or whatever?"

"It's Shakespeare, Dean. So, I said yes. I took her scythe and I became Death. And then I waited for Jack to come bust me out." 

Dean is quiet for a beat. Cas doesn't look different, but… "What's it like? Being Death?" 

"Oh." Cas shrugs. His ridiculous trenchcoat rustles. "It's a strange power. I can feel souls that are close to dying. It's like looking down on earth and seeing all of the fruit ripe enough to fall off the vine, knowing they need to be harvested or they'll fall to the ground and rot there, as ghosts, turning slowly mad. I'm trying not to use any of the other powers. I'm just… trying to sort out what Billie left behind." 

Cas sighs and gets to his feet and Dean follows. The Impala's headlights turn on seemingly of their own accord, lighting up the scene. 

Cas is just as bad at personal space as ever. They are standing so close together under all these stars. 

"I did come here for a reason, Dean." Cas' voice is serious. Dean can't help the image of him in the bunker from popping back into his head, Cas crying like Dean had never seen him cry before, Cas _seeing_ him in ways that even Heaven hasn't fully softened Dean for. 

"Cas, I…" 

"I need you to hold on to something for me." Cas speaks over him, reaching beneath his own shirt and pulling a black cord over his head. He holds it out to Dean. 

At the end of the necklace is a familiar cylindrical bottle with a silver clasp, full of glowing silver-white light. 

Dean stares at it. "What? Why?" 

"Because." Cas' eyes fix on Dean's and they are so blue, so full of starlight. "I don't need it as Death. I want to do this job, to be a good shepherd, and to help Jack figure out what to do about the afterlife. But, someday, when I am able to give up this gift and burden, when I can pass this mantle on to someone else worthy of it, if I die without my grace…" 

Dean's eyes widen as he understands. "You'd die human?" 

Cas shrugs again. "I would die as something closer to human, yes." 

"So… you could come here? To Heaven?" 

They haven't broken eye contact yet. 

"Yes. To Heaven." 

Dean takes the bottle from Cas' outstretched hand and hangs it around his neck. Dean hasn't worn a necklace since he stopped wearing the amulet. Cas' grace is a little too pretty for his taste in jewelry, truth be told, but it falls to the middle of his chest and he tucks it beneath his shirt. The pendant is warm against his skin. 

Dean used to wear Sam's amulet, his old ring, the bracelets, as a way of carrying his home with him. It was a way of belonging, of tying himself down in the smallest of ways. Maybe it was because of John's dog tags that he'd first associated these things with identity. He'd loved the amulet from Sam more than words because it meant someone thought about him, it was something he could display as having been worthy of. 

"Thank you," Cas says. 

"Yeah, of course, man," Dean says, and winces internally. He's not good at this. 

"It's going to be a long time, you know, even by Heaven's terms." 

Dean nods. He figured as much. "But, eventually…" 

"Eventually, yes." 

Dean understands what Cas is saying. Eventually, he too will come home. That he wants to come to the Heaven he deserves, and that isn't wherever he and Jack decide to send the angels. It's here. It's with his family. 

And there's Dean's funny human heart again, beating hard out of habit, even though he doesn't need it to tell him what he's feeling. 

"Cas…" 

"Dean, we don't have to… We don't have to talk about what happened. What I said." Cas finally looks away, shoving his hands into the pockets of his coat. "I can't take it back, but I don't want it to be a wall between us. You are my friend and my… my family. Those things are still true. I hope… I hope they are still true for you." 

"I'm sorry, Cas." Dean's own voice comes out rough. He clears his throat. "I mean, you died to save me, and I only lasted like two more weeks. That's a bad bargain. I'm sorry I made your sacrifice so pointless." Dean tries to smile, but it's tight and pained. 

Cas tilts his head, and it's almost exactly the same look he gave Dean the first time they met.

_What's the matter? You don't think you deserve to be saved?_

Except then, he'd been an angel of the lord, a soldier - the one who had gripped Dean tight and raised him from perdition, yes, but not the person who had fought and traveled and laughed at Dean's side. 

There is softness in the lines around his eyes that wasn't there before. 

"I would have done it," Cas says, his voice the deep gravel of surety. "To give you just one more day. It isn't about the amount of time, Dean, it's what you did with it. The world needed you. If I had to do it over again, I would make the same exact choice. I would always choose to save you." 

Dean closes his eyes for a second and takes a deep breath, letting those words and this feeling build in his chest. When he opens his eyes again, Cas is looking at him with the same sad smile he had on his face before he died. 

"Cas, you said the angels don't belong here. Does that mean Heaven doesn't work for you?"

Cas' brows crease. "What do you mean?" 

"I mean, whatever you are now, angel, Death, do the rules work for you here? Like if you wanted a cheeseburger or whatever, would one just show up in your pocket?" 

"Oh. No, I don't think so." Cas is still frowning. "I didn't - we didn't build this place for me." 

"Of course you didn't." 

Dean touches Cas' face, the way he has a hundred times, the way he has always done to comfort himself that Cas is still alive and real and himself. 

"I want to be sure you know that this isn't just Heaven," Dean says. Even like this, eyes locked, Dean's thumb just grazing the stubble of his cheek, Cas' brow is still furrowed with confusion. 

Dean closes his eyes as he leans in. When their mouths touch, Cas doesn't respond for a second, the surprise palpable between them. And then he does respond, and it's… 

There's a stretch of highway in the mountain passes of Montana where the road dips up and down in a series of small hills for several miles. The speed limit is loosely 80 mph, but it's not like anyone is there to see if you observe this suggestion. When Dean drove through it last, he hit the gas pedal and soared along the road, going fast enough that it felt like a rollercoaster, fast enough that whenever he crested an incline at full speed it felt like his front tires were meeting the wide open sky. It was exhilarating, foolish, something that made him laugh out loud with the joy of it, of being on the road with the big blue sky open before him. 

Kissing Cas is something like that. 

Dean pulls back, his hand slipping from the back of Cas' neck. 

"Okay?" He says gruffly. It comes out too rough, but Cas is smiling at him, looking at him the way he had when he'd told Dean he was his one true happiness. 

"I can't stay, you know," Cas says. It's apologetic and hopeful all at once. "Not yet." 

Dean nods. He clears his throat. He's just not good at this. 

"I know. But happiness isn't just in the having." 

The look on Cas' face is worth how stupid and vulnerable Dean feels echoing his words back to him. 

"Hey, c'mere." Dean grabs Cas' arm and pulls him into the illuminated ground in front of the Impala's headlights. Cas allows himself to be towed into the spotlight. He lets Dean takes his arms and place one hand on Dean's shoulder. Dean takes the other and puts his free hand on Cas' waist. 

"You ever dance, Cas? In the millenia you've been around?" 

"No, I-" Cas breaks off, starts again, quieter this time. "I'm afraid I never learned." 

Dean shakes his head. "Yeah, me either. Always wanted to, though." 

He takes a step forward and Cas shuffles ungainly backward. Dean tips his head back and laughs. He only stops laughing when Cas tries to let go of his hand. 

"C'mon, man, we're two trained fighters. We can figure out a waltz. We just need music." 

Dean starts to hum. He doesn't realize what he's humming until the stereo in the Impala flicks on and the tinny, perfect music comes floating out into the night. 

It's Frank Sinatra's "Fly Me to the Moon." 

Cas relaxes into Dean, and okay, they don't waltz, but they hold onto each other and move gently in the glow of the headlights. Cas steps on Dean's feet a few times, and it's new and a little awkward and it makes Dean laugh giddily. 

Time is different in Heaven, but night slowly turns into day. It's dawn when Cas finally looks up at the lightening sky and sighs. 

"I have to go." 

Dean steps back and sits on the hood of the Impala. "Go on. Take care of your souls." 

Cas hesitates a second before he reaches out and touches Dean's chest, right where his grace hangs. Dean can feel its warm press into his skin. 

"I'll be back when I can." 

Dean covers Cas' hand with his own. He's surprisingly at peace with all of this. Heaven might not cater to Cas' whims yet, but it's still not giving Dean more than he can handle all at once. 

Cas' large, warm hand pressed to Dean's chest, his grace against Dean's skin, these are things he's going to hold onto and turn over in his head for a long time before he fully understands what they mean to him. 

"Goodbye, Cas." 

"Goodbye, Dean."


	4. My eyes have always followed you around the room

The days go by in their ineffable way. Dean fixes things around the house, mows his lawn, and finds that he never gets tired of looking at the mountains and trees. 

A couple of times a year now, Cas shows up and spends a few hours with him. Usually they have at least once dance, and Dean's getting pretty good. Cas… tries. Dean jokes that it's because Cas gave him all his grace, which Cas does not think is amusing. Dean doesn't really mind that they mostly end up in a basic two-step slow-dance. All that matters is that they've found rhythm with each other. 

Some nights, they lay on the rock slab above the canyon or in the summer grasses of fields and Cas tells Dean all the things he wanted to know about the stars. 

They're at the canyon one night, laying on their backs, their fingers having tangled together seemingly by some force of gravity. Cas has just pointed out Perseus and Andromeda, the eternal celestial lovers. 

"This might be a dumb question," Dean says. He usually starts his questions about space this way. "But is there actually a center to the universe? Do you know?" 

"It's not a dumb question," Cas says. Which is what he always says. "And I do know. The answer is surprisingly simple." 

Cas rolls up onto one elbow so that he's looking down at Dean. He presses one fingertip to the freckles beneath Dean's right eye. Dean blinks reflexively. "It's right here." 

"Cas, not for nothing, but that is the cheesiest thing anyone's ever said to me." Dean can't help grinning up at him anyway. 

Cas lets out a world-weary kind of sigh. "I didn't mean you, you…" he pauses, struggling to come up with an insult. 

"Dumbass?" Dean supplies patiently. 

"You dumbass," Cas tries. He wrinkles his nose and flops back onto the ground. "The center of the observable universe is the observer. The universe is both infinite and expanding, which means that, assuming the universe is isotropic, the point from which you are observing it must mathematically be the center." 

"Oh," Dean says. Then " _Oh_." He's not really sure what this means, but the resonance of it is clear. "Well isn't that just poetic." 

"It's science and math, Dean." Cas pauses for a moment, then adds "Which I suppose could be how the universe writes poetry." 

Dean feels the weight of the stars in his chest. It's still an ache here, that longing, that awe. He leans his head onto Cas' shoulder. 

"Tell me something, Cas. You say "the observable universe." Is the unobservable universe Chuck's multiverse, or...?"

Cas rests his cheek momentarily on the top of Dean's head, and Dean hears him inhale into his hair before he straightens back up. Dean almost ribs him about smelling him, but he stops himself. It's weird, but it's sweet. That's Cas' M.O. in a nutshell, really. 

Cas sighs a little again. "That's a more complicated answer. The universe is infinite, Dean. Infinite _and_ expanding. When humans say "the observable universe", they mean it, they mean what can be seen from their orbit. So no, it's not strictly the other universes. But also yes. Each of those multiverse worlds has their own observable universe that exists very far away from our own. Sometimes it's called the "meta-universe," and we're all a part of it. Those other worlds are a part of us. The rifts that can exist between systems of life in the totality of the universe, it's… it goes beyond space-time. I don't know how to explain it. As Death, it's easier to see how _connected_ it all is, how life is just calling out to life across the universe. I don't know if it's because of Chuck, but sometimes, I think… Sometimes I think the universe wants to be observed." 

They're both quiet for a time. Their fingers are still intertwined between them and Dean is mildly obsessed with how warm Cas' hands always seem to be. It's exactly the same warmth as the grace that rests against his chest. 

"So… if we can see all the stars and planets in Heaven, does that mean one of these guys could be another world out there?" Dean points at a bright, steady point of light in the cosmos. 

"No, I'm afraid even our Heaven is limited to this universe. Jack's traveling between them, you know. The dimensions of the afterlife are complicated, but this Heaven is contained within the folds of our observable universe. Besides, that one," Cas brings his free hand up to trace the spot Dean pointed at, "is Uranus." 

Dean has to bite his lip and breathe for a second to get himself under control. "It's what?" he asks in a forcibly level voice. 

"Uranus," Cas repeats in his gravelly tone. 

"Say it again. Slowly." 

"Uran-" Cas breaks off. "Ah." 

Dean tips his head back against the hard rock and laughs. When he's done chuckling he leans over and kisses Cas on his slightly flushed cheek. "You're an adorable nerd." 

"You are a _child,"_ Cas says, but there's nothing but quiet amusement in it. "You know, the man who discovered the planet didn't even want to call it that. He wanted to name it George." 

Dean laughs again, settling back against Cas' shoulder. "Well, eleven-year-olds everywhere are so grateful he was overruled." 

***

“Can I ask you something, Cas?” 

The backseat of the Impala certainly isn’t meant for two people, and for some reason Heaven hasn’t thought to expand it under the circumstances, so Cas is half draped over Dean, their legs tangled, Cas’ face buried in Dean’s hair and Dean’s cheek resting against Cas’ chest. 

It's been nearly five years back on earth. It’s not that Dean didn’t want to do this before. And, as it turns out, it’s certainly not that Cas didn’t want to, it was just that Dean could never think of a smooth way to say “Hey, come into the backseat with me.” 

It ended up not mattering that that was more or less what he did finally say, because the whole thing was a little awkward. Dean kept laughing and then reassuring Cas that it was out of nerves, and Cas kept asking "is this okay?" and they both kept banging their heads and elbows into different parts of the car, until finally they'd figured things out. It turned out the gentle awkwardness, the laughter as Cas knocked his head against the roof of the Impala, grinning foolishly at each other in the dim light, it was all a part of it. 

It was all perfect, in the end. 

"Anything," Cas says. He runs his fingers lazily through Dean's hair and Dean has to close his eyes with the sheer contentment of it. 

"When did you know?" 

"When did I know that I loved you?" Cas' voice reverberates against Dean's ear where it is pressed to his chest. It is such a strange thing, to get to have this. To be allowed it. 

"Yeah." Dean runs his fingers along Cas' side, tracing the outline of his ribs and hips. He hasn't said it yet, but Cas knows. He thinks Cas knows. "That." 

Cas is quiet for a moment before he speaks softly into Dean's hair. "Have I ever told you what I saw when I arrived in Hell at the head of my garrison? We fought our way to you, you know, down in the very pits of that place. When we came bursting into the darkness where Alistair held sway, we were in a wedge formation, pushing our way through the hoards of Hell with brute force. Our mission was not to defeat their armies. Our only mission was to reach you. To save you." 

Cas sighs and shifts a little, somehow wrapping even tighter around Dean so that he is basically sinking into the crack of the leather seats. 

"I was at the very point of our host. I could see at once that we were too late, that Alistair had pulled you from the rack." 

"Cas, I…" 

"Please. Let me finish. Our mission was to save you, no matter what. It didn't matter that you had broken the first seal. Not to me and not to Heaven. It was all part of fate, or at least, that's what I thought then. 

"You never even looked up. I saw you, so focused on what was before you, locked in your own worst nightmare. I know you told Sam once that you liked it. And I know you were telling him the truth. But I also know that after a life spent saving people, a life of sacrifice, that to be put in a position to hurt other humans was a personal Hell like nothing else." 

Dean is grateful that Cas can't see his face. He wishes he would just stop talking, and it's the first time he's felt that particular warped emotion since whatever was the last heartfelt confession Sam dragged out of him, and that realization only adds another layer to the confusion of pain he's feeling. 

Hell was so long ago. A lifetime now, really. 

Turns out maybe Sammi was right all along. Dean's not good at letting go of things. Even in Heaven. 

"When I pulled you out of Hell, I wasn't raising your body, Dean. I was gripping your soul. That's what I saw when we reached you. Your soul, battered and torn but still not broken. I'd seen hundreds of souls, hundreds of thousands of them. It wasn't that yours glowed the brightest or purest, it was that the root and fabric of your soul had the most singular persistence, a purpose that burned hotter than even my own faith in Heaven. And the moment I touched you, I…" 

_When Castiel first laid a hand on you in Hell, he was lost._

Cas falters and he sighs again before continuing. "I think I loved you then. But I began to know it when we'd captured Alistair. You remember, with Uriel…" 

"How could I forget?" Dean mutters. 

"It was the first time I came close to disobeying. The first time in the millenia of my life, Dean. And all because I believed you. Because I did not want to see you hurt. You made me feel something was wrong, gave me something other than my orders to care about. And I wanted… I remember that I wanted you to know I wasn't a mindless hammer. I wanted you to know I was more than a soldier of Heaven. That had never mattered before. 

"After that, it was in everything. Do you know what passage of the Bible I thought of more than any other in the time before I rebelled, before I fell?" 

"Uh, was it Genesis 19?" 

"Don't be ridiculous. Sodom and Gomorrah was highly apocryphal." Cas' voice is slightly irritated, but he's still stroking Dean's hair, and Dean smiles even though Cas can't see it. 

"The verse I read over and over again, the one last hope I had that maybe my disobedience wasn't entirely against God's plan, was First Corinthians 13." 

Dean is pretty familiar with both the Old and New Testament by this point. After everything, it would have been ludicrous not to have read the damn thing cover to cover for research. So he knows what Cas is saying and it makes every part of his body warm in a way that he doesn't know what to do with. 

_Love is patient. Love is kind._

"'If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal… and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing,'" Cas recites, there in the Impala, in Heaven, his gravel voice a near whisper. "'And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.''' 

It's too much. 

But it's Cas, and it's true. 

Dean knows it's true. 

"Cas, I'm not… I don't…" Dean wants to say that he doesn't deserve that First Corinthians kind of love. Afterall, they are in literal Heaven, with nothing to lose, nothing to fear, and Dean still can't say it back. He doesn't know why, really. He'd thought Heaven would have fixed him, but some things are slow healing. 

Then again, maybe it's not so unreasonable to need the time to undo nearly forty years of neglect and repression and whatever else it is that makes up the darkness that is him. 

There's nothing but time to heal here, and Dean wants to. He knows that, at least. 

He pulls his face unwillingly away from Cas' chest and looks up into his best friend's crinkled blue eyes. 

"Are you sorry you asked?" Cas' face is a little worried, all his familiar earnestness written in the lines of his forehead. 

Dean can't help smiling with Cas looking at him like that. 

Cas has seen his soul, after all. 

He knows. 

"No," Dean says. "I'm not sorry." 

When they kiss, it is patient. It is kind.

***

Something like five or maybe ten years in, Dean's eating dinner at The Roadhouse, as he often does. Everyone's there this evening and he's sandwiched at the table between Jo and Bobby. 

Back on earth, Sam has just had a son. Dean cried and laughed and cried some more to watch his baby brother become a father. To hear them name the boy "Dean". It damn near broke his heart. 

In Heaven, though, he and Jo are wrestling at the table over the last dinner roll. It's Heaven, so presumably the roll could just duplicate itself, but the sibling squabbling is the point. It eases the absence in Dean's heart. 

Jo breaks away, triumphant and stuffs the roll whole into her mouth, managing to stick her tongue out around it. 

"Joanna Beth," Ellen warns from Bobby's other side. 

Jo and Dean grin at each other. As Jo chews her winnings, her eyes suddenly go wide. She swallows, and with a sparkle of devious glee in her eyes, reaches out to pick up the necklace that has fallen out from beneath Dean's shirt during their fight.

"Now what is this pretty little thing?" 

Dean swats her hand away but he can feel his cheeks already heating. 

"Is that… grace?" Mary, sitting across from them looks at the bottle with wide, slightly worried eyes. Everyone's looking at Dean now and he's afraid his ears are turning pink. 

Bobby leans over to see what the fuss is about, his arm going around the back of Dean's chair in what Dean can't help but interpret as a protective move. 

"That's Cas', ain't it?" He says. He shoots what might be a glare across the table - it's hard to tell with Bobby sometimes. 

Dean glances up in time to catch Mary also casting a worried look at John. Dean tucks the necklace back under his shirt. 

"Uh, yeah," he says to Bobby. He's glad Bobby's there next to him. "He asked me to hold onto it for him. While he's Death, you know." 

Bobby grunts. "How the hell is he, anyhow? Haven't seen the feathery bastard since before you turned up." 

"He's good. He's busy." Dean finally looks at his father, sitting across from him next to Mary. John's mouth quirks in a sad little smile. It's not an apology or even an acknowledgement, but Dean thinks he understands. 

"So, will I ever get to meet Castiel, this angel of Death I've heard so much about?" John asks. 

Dean feels a collective release of tension in the room as Bobby pats him on the back and takes his arm back to continue eating. 

Dean smiles a little, touching the grace beneath his shirt self-consciously. "I imagine you will, eventually." 

***

Dean never really thought about Heaven having a junkyard, but he supposes it wouldn't be Bobby's Heaven without it. It isn't exactly the same as it was in life - it's downsized and not as full of potential for tetanus, for one - but it smells the same, that familiar mix of gasoline and old leather lining. 

Dean tinkers there occasionally, finding himself turning up whenever Bobby needs an extra pair of hands. Some indeterminable time after their last roadhouse dinner, Dean shows up early in the morning and habitually starts cleaning up the tools Bobby's left out. He's run a rag over everything and just slid under an old 1955 Ford F100 when the side door creaks and he hears Bobby's familiar heavy footsteps. 

"You got something on your mind, son?" Bobby calls. Dean can just see his shins from under the car as he sinks down onto one of the work stools. 

"Just thought I'd help out today." Dean looks up at the bottom of the truck. Her undercarriage is a little rusty, but she's in good shape. 

"Sure." Bobby's casually sardonic tone is so familiar it's comforting. "'Cept even in Heaven I never see your ass up and about this early. Stop hiding under that car and come tell me what's up." 

Dean slides out and blinks up at the blinding morning sun directly behind Bobby's hat. He takes his time sitting up and wiping his hands on the grease rag, even though he's barely touched anything. 

"It's nothing. Just wanted to do something with my hands today." 

"Sure," Bobby says again. 

"Hey, idle hands lead to idle minds or whatever." 

"That's not the saying. It's 'Idle hands are the devil's workshop.' Which I doubt is true in Heaven." 

"You check in on Sam recently?" 

"Mm. Yeah, our kid is doing alright, ain't he?" 

Dean smiles, looking down at the rag he's twisting into a tight cord. "Hey, Bobby?" 

"Yep?" 

"About Cas…" 

"Son, I don't need you or the hosts of Heaven to tell me that that angel of yours has been in love with you since he hauled your ass out of Hell." Bobby takes a sip from a mug of steaming coffee. Dean is pretty sure it wasn't in his hand a moment before. "And for what it's worth, the two of you could do a lot worse than each other." 

Dean looks down at the cement beneath the creeper where oil stains are scattered Pollack-esque, even in Heaven. 

"Do you think Sam…?" Dean can't quite finish the question. There's a lump in his throat for the first time in recent memory. 

Bobby snorts. "If Sam didn't already know, he's a bigger idjit than you." Bobby pats the stool beside him and Dean clambers to his feet, tossing the rag onto the creeper and joining him. Bobby hands him a second cup of coffee and Dean wraps his hands around the mug, the warmth of it welcoming in the chill morning air. 

"Listen, Dean, I just about raised you boys myself and maybe I should have done more, I don't know. Maybe I should have made your daddy leave you with me for good the first time you stayed over. I saw what the life was doing to you. First time your dad left you with me you couldn't have been more than eight, but you were already taking care of your little brother like you were the father. I remember, I tried to get you to go play with a couple of neighborhood kids, but you were too anxious looking after Sammi. You wouldn't even trust me to put him to bed right." Bobby chuckles. "Sam was such a bright little kid, always wanted to be told a story, had the sweetest smile you've ever seen. But you, though… the minute I met you, Dean, I could see you were already thinking like a hunter. No kid should have to know the things you did. And no kid should have to carry what your old man put on your shoulders. You were holding that family of yours together at eight years old, and god help me, I knew how wrong that was. I knew, and I didn't stop it." 

"Bobby…" 

"Just listen, would you? Let an old man have his piece. Anyhow, I knew it weren't right. Your daddy and me, we both failed you. I'm sorry for that. And I know you forgive me, because this is Heaven, and because that's what you do, but that don't make it right. I was a drunk, even then, you know, but it's no excuse. I suppose I told myself that you _wanted_ to take care of your brother, it was so clear you loved him more than anything. You were so full of love you were damn near bursting with it. And even though I was a cantankerous old bastard with a hunter's calcified heart, I loved you like a son the moment you were dropped on my doorstep. You cared so much. It's not right that you were forced to be a caretaker, but your love was so bright. It always has been. You're a fool, don't get me wrong, but I'm so proud of you. I'm so proud of my boys. Any father would be. It's a privilege to have helped raise you and Sam." Bobby pretends to take a sip of his coffee, but Dean can see that he's choked up. "Anyhow, what I'm saying is, if there's anyone out there who can return the kind of love I've seen in you, then it just might be someone who's given up everything, over and over, just to save you. You deserve love, Dean. And I sure don't give a damn if that love comes wrapped in a trench coat. It don't make a lick of difference far as I'm concerned." 

Dean has to wipe his eyes as Bobby generously becomes very interested in his coffee. When they've both recovered slightly, Dean lets out a long shaky breath. 

"Thanks, Bobby." 

Bobby shrugs. There's a smile beneath his scruffy beard. "Only question is, what are you going to do now?” 

***

Dean’s driving down the long highway, windows down, stereo turned up, when he sees a figure on the horizon, just at the line where the black road meets the blue sky. He’d recognize that silhouette anywhere and he grins, easing up on the gas as he approaches and pulls off to the side. It’s not like there are other cars coming along, but this too is habit. 

Something like twenty years of living time have gone by. Baby Dean down on earth isn’t such a baby anymore. Dean, the original Dean, sneaks glances of his nephew with an equal mixture of sadness and pride. He knows he’ll meet him, in the end, but the thought of Sam’s son growing up not knowing Dean just about kills him. 

He’s spent the last few years accepting over again that he’ll never have a child. He’s okay with that, mostly. He always sort of thought, if he could ever retire, that he’d be a good father. He’d raised Sam, afterall. He’d been good with Ben. But even so, the idea of passing on his genes, or even the possibility that a kid of his would come to be a hunter… Dean had never been able to stand the thought of a child under his care growing up the way he had. He’d never been able to see past that. 

Seeing Sam raise a child, though, feels a little like he’s passed the right things down. Sam is so good with Baby Dean, so loving and gentle and attentive. Eileen has to push him in the right direction sometimes, but they’re good parents. They’re raising him in love and safety.

When Dean pulls off the highway and gets out of the Impala, Cas is still standing in his slightly unnatural stillness, waiting for him. Dean sweeps him up in a hug, squeezing him hard, feeling Cas return the pressure. 

This is how it always is. 

Before anything, Dean still feels the need to hold him, to make sure Cas is solid and, well, not _alive_ maybe, but _there_. Real. He’s lost him too many times, even in Heaven he doesn’t take Cas’ existence for granted. 

Cas rests his head in the crook of Dean’s neck for a moment as they hold onto each other, reassuring warmth and pressure building between them. When Dean finally lets go, it’s to take Cas’ face in his hand and kiss him. 

The thing between them is tender. That First Corinthians kind of love.

_It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres._

It’s something that Dean recognizes he never would have let himself have on earth. It is too vulnerable, too sweet. He could imagine a living version of this with desperate physicality, of kissing Cas with urgency, of clinging to him like to a buoy out at sea. But the gentleness of Cas’s hands on Dean’s lower back, the kisses on the forehead, their fingers tangled together under the starlight, the laughter between them over beers leaning against the Impala, the glow of knowing one another… 

“I can’t stay long,” Cas says, a little out of breath. He looks especially windswept now that Dean’s hands have been in his hair. “I just wanted to… say hello.” 

“Hello,” Dean murmurs, kissing beneath Cas’ ear. He wraps his arms around Cas and just holds him again. Every moment like this puts distance between his last living memory of Cas, of the confusion and guilt and grief that had poured over his soul like sacrament. His living memories are never gone, including the pain of them, but Dean thinks he understands what Heaven is doing in letting him work through that. 

Cas sighs, running his hand up the line of Dean’s spine through his jacket. “I should go.” 

“Okay.” Dean doesn’t make any move to loosen his hold on Cas, and Cas doesn’t try to disentangle himself. They stay wrapped up in each other for a while without speaking. It’s weird, but it’s sweet. 

Finally, Cas sighs again, and this time he does take a step back from Dean. “I’ll be back,” he says. 

Dean shoves his hands into his pockets and scuffs his boot against the gravel that litters the shoulder off the road. It’s always the right temperature in Heaven. Sometimes there are seasons, but they don’t seem particularly concerned with appearing in any sequential order. Most of the time, Dean thinks of it as early fall or late spring. Jacket weather, but with a sun that warms the skin and a breeze that cools it off. 

“Hey, Cas?” 

“Yes, Dean?” 

Dean looks at him, forces himself to make eye contact. His voice comes out a little gruffer than he means it to again. “I love you.” 

Cas smiles and it’s beatific. Cas talks about love casually, as if the way he feels about Dean is a given. A constant of the universe. Dean has tried to say it before, tried to make it clear in any number of ways, but he hasn’t actually used the words. 

Cas brushes Dean’s fingers with his own, still smiling. 

“I know,” he says. In a slight rustle, he’s gone. 

Dean blinks, looking at the spot where Cas stood for a second before he laughs. He shakes his head, grinning, and can’t help looking up at the sky, even though there’s nothing to suggest Cas is anywhere above him. 

"Son of a bitch," he says to himself. "I taught him well." 

***

Sam Winchester lives forty years without his brother. He marries, raises a child, and dies a peaceful death at home in his late seventies. When the time comes, he finds himself rising from his bed and realizing with a pang that his spectral form is exactly the age he was when he last saw Dean. He can’t help the swell of hope in his chest as he looks around the room, waiting. 

His son, Dean, is crying softly at his bedside. Sam places a hand on his shoulder, and his son looks up with tears on his face. He looks right through Sam, but he seems to feel him there. 

Eileen is asleep in their bedroom. She’s still healthy as a horse, and Sam is pretty sure she’ll live another twenty years that way, bullying their son into taking care of himself as much as he takes care of her. They’ll miss him, and he’ll miss them, but they’ll be alright. They’ll carry on. 

“Hello, Sam.” 

Sam turns and breaks into an incredulous grin. Cas is standing in the doorway, same trench coat, same tie, looking for all the world like the last time Sam saw him. 

“Cas?!” Sam steps forward to hug his old friend, then stops at the last second. “What the hell are you doing here? Are you… Are you a reaper?” 

Cas shrugs. He’s smiling. “Something like that. I’m here to take you on, at any rate.” 

Sam glances once more at his son, still sitting over his body and weeping openly. “I don’t suppose you’ll tell me where exactly I’m going.” 

“I’m afraid not.” 

Sam nods. “Well, it’s good to see you, anyway. God, I’ve missed you.” 

“And I you.” Cas holds out his arms. “Are you ready?” 

Sam takes one last glance back, then steps forward and embraces him. The light that overwhelms him is instantaneous. Sam barely blinks, and he’s standing at the end of a bridge. All around him are great towering trees and bright blue sky. The sounds of nature are everywhere. It’s so lovely it almost hurts to take in. Cas puts a hand on his shoulder and pushes him gently toward the bridge. 

“Go on,” he says. “I’ll see you again soon.” 

Sam is about to protest, but Cas has already vanished. Sam makes his way up to the bridge and he doesn’t have to get too close to realize what’s waiting for him there. 

There’s that car, the same one he kept in his garage all these years, the same one that was the only home he and Dean had ever really known as kids, the thing that most reminded him of his brother. 

And there’s Dean, standing with his back to Sam, looking out at the view. 

And what a view. The river roars underneath them, the water a swirling green and blue, the sunlight reflecting in its rapids. The trees are tall and green, growing all the way up to the mountains in the distance. 

Dean turns around as Sam approaches and he’s smiling, his face the same as Sam remembers it, but his eyes and the ease in his body are more carefree than he’d ever been in life. There’s something softer in him here. Sam can feel it in himself too. 

So this is Heaven. 

“Hey Sammi,” Dean says. He embraces Sam, and they hold each other more than they hug. The last time Dean held his baby brother like this was when he was dying. Before that, probably when Sam was five or younger. 

This is Heaven. 

When they finally let go, there are no words. Dean’s heart is so full. He and Sam turn to look out at the view together. Dean slings his arm around his brother and rests his hand on the back of Sam’s neck. Finally, there is nothing else he needs. The absence inside him has been filled. 

There will be things left to do, of course. There’s still Baby Dean and Eileen to watch for. There’s the plot of land next door to Dean’s that he’s been saving for Sam. He thought about putting in the foundation before Sam got here, but he wanted them to work on it together. They’ll build a house from the bones up, get it ready for Sam and his family. There’s still Sam’s relationship with their parents to mend. There’s still Cas, who won’t be coming home for a while. But these things will come. Dean can wait. There’s nothing but time. 

Dean and Sam stand there, the Winchester brothers, together at last, their love palpable between them. 

Just down the highway, the rest of their family is waiting for them. 

Jack is with them. He is with them everywhere. 

Cas is watching over them, working to come home to them for good. 

There’s nothing but time. Nothing but love. 

This is the Heaven they deserve. It's the ending they earned. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *feverishly sends to the writers and/or network* SEE THAT WASN'T SO HARD NOW WAS IT 
> 
> Chapter titles:  
> 1\. That's The Way - Led Zeppelin  
> 2\. Simple Man - see: cover by Jason Mann/Jensen Ackles  
> 3\. Fly Me to the Moon - Frank Sinatra  
> 4\. If I Had a Gun - Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds 
> 
> Other notes:  
> I'm losing my goddamn mind over this show, which is a surprise, considering I hadn't watched it in years. I hope this helps in some small way. It helped me to cope. 
> 
> I appreciate your comments. One comment equals one drop of serotonin, which, you know, in this economy... 
> 
> Y yo a ti, Cas.

**Author's Note:**

> I haven't watched the last four or five season of Supernatural, so I'm extrapolating some of the context here. I may regret not taking the time to go more meta, but this is coming to you hot off the press, as fast as my little fingers could type it. GOTTA PUT THESE FEELINGS SOMEWHERE  
> I'M FINE


End file.
